RACEDEPARTMENT.COM US public server

We are going to have a RD public server up this evening. @ Valencia, not sure which cars yet, but feel free to get on and have some fun. The idea is to promote RaceDepartment.com in North America. I will be able to monitor what is going on there after 6pm PST and can ban/boot anyone causing trouble.

@ ~9:30PST we will have a friendly race with a few West coast members (Mitch, Bob, Chris, Marty and I) and anyone else who would join.

It was fun last night! I got flustered with the GT cars as they're really high powered and threw me off. The GT Sport race we had at Brno went better, but I'm thinking if we had the Pro at Brno and Sport at Valencia it would have been neat as well.
I kind of like the FWD cars for off-race days as they give me a chance to have quick stress-free cooldown races that also let me practice knowing it's impossible to throw the car into a corner too fast.

Last night was a great start and a success. I think after a couple weeks of this the word will get out that we offer good clean racing and people will be watching for our server. I know before I came to RD if there was a public server offering this I would have found it and looked forward to racing there. Of course most of us were drawn to RD for this reason. I think the key for this to work is having at least 4 RD members present on the server. We had almost no issues last night with bad behavior and the server stayed very active.

As far as what cars and tracks to consider I agree with Marcel that the Mini's are well suited . They make good racing and are popular. We should stick with the more popular cars and tracks at first like wtcc07/Mini's Ober/ monza /zander/valenz/brands. Then as we get established with regulars we could take popular requests. We are defiantly going to have people interested in RD after getting a taste of how we race and conduct ourselves. Great idea Eric its going to work!

I think the event went extremely well last night. Had a lot of fun and so did the non-RD people. That's the point. Three observations:
1) This is a short attention span crowd so the races need to be short 6-8 laps tops
2) Have several tracks on the server. Few people will stay to race the same track twice, but most would stay for a new track
3) Have RD "representatives" there. The behavior was MUCH better than I've experienced on other public servers because it was obvious that it was a "monitored" public server

As a marketing tool, this will surely attract new club members and provide some good racing as well.

Another observation. During the Chat discussion in the event several RD members commented that they liked the ability to have a "pickup" race but were concerned about having an unmonitored server.

What about having a password Club "pickup race" server setup running all the time (like the hotlap server) but using the public server format (i.e. short 6-8 lap races, multiple rotating tracks)? This way RD members with a little time on their hands can engage in quick races with other RD members. Good way for newer members to gain race experience too.

Well, actually we could use any of our practice servers for that (we have 3 at times going)? All we need to do is to setup a long quali (a few hours) and a host 6~8 laps race. I can do that if you guys like.

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Another observation. During the Chat discussion in the event several RD members commented that they liked the ability to have a "pickup" race but were concerned about having an unmonitored server.

What about having a password Club "pickup race" server setup running all the time (like the hotlap server) but using the public server format (i.e. short 6-8 lap races, multiple rotating tracks)? This way RD members with a little time on their hands can engage in quick races with other RD members. Good way for newer members to gain race experience too.

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Good idea, that whats the chatbox in the racing club was for designed, so people can shout out and hop on the track.
Maybe we should discuss this in the staff Eric?

Well, actually we could use any of our practice servers for that (we have 3 at times going)? All we need to do is to setup a long quali (a few hours) and a host 6~8 laps race. I can do that if you guys like.

Click to expand...

Actually the idea is to have a near zero maintenance server (no work for you after setup) and to get to racing quickly at any time and on the spur of the moment.